Dr. Saxon Graham Social and Preventive Medicine Student Award

There is a great deal of evidence now that diet affects
cancer risk. That connection wasn’t obvious, though, in the
1950s, when L. Saxon Graham began breaking new ground in cancer
epidemiology.

Over the next half-century, Graham, Professor and Chair Emeritus
of the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, contributed
some of the most important research on diet and cancer.

“He was a major figure in epidemiology,” says Jo
Freudenheim, UB Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department
of Social and Preventive Medicine. “He started doing work at
a time when people said, ‘Oh, you can’t do that.’
His contributions showed that it was possible to measure diet and
made people move forward and do research that needed to be
done,” adds Freudenheim, whom Graham mentored when she came
to UB as a post-doctoral fellow in 1987.

As significant as his contributions were in cancer epidemiology,
his legacy lives on through the lives of the many students whose
academic lives he impacted. In 2008, many of his students and
colleagues established the Dr. Saxon Graham Social and
Preventive Medicine Student Award in his honor. The fund is used to
provide an annual award to a student(s) who displays academic
excellence and promise in the field of social and preventative
medicine.

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L. Saxon Graham, PhD, a longtime SPHHP professor and chair of
the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine from 1981-1991,
was considered among the most important cancer epidemiologists for
his groundbreaking studies examining the link between diet and
cancer beginning in the 1950s. He died at age 90 in May 2012.